22 Bird Portraits 
The name of the family to which the Redstart belongs needs, 
perhaps, a word of explanation. It simply means that our Warblers 
are related to a family of European birds which have well earned 
their name, since the family includes the Nightingale and one or two 
other birds almost as musical. The name Redstart, too, is English, 
—start coming from the Anglo-Saxon word for tail. It was applied 
in England to a bird with a red tail, and since our bird has 
bright color in the tail, the name was transferred to it by the 
English settlers. 
Many of the Warblers frequent the thick woods and are little 
noticed; the Redstart, however, often builds in the trees or shrubbery 
about the house, particularly if a brook or pool afford an abundance 
of insects. In the crotch of a sapling or on a limb, the female 
places a pretty nest built of bark and soft materials. The female 
resembles the male in the pattern of color, but the black is replaced 
by gray, and the orange by a faint yellowish shade. Males only 
one year old resemble the female so closely that the sharp little 
song often seems to proceed from the bill of a female; in reality 
it is a young male that is singing, one not yet arrived at the full 
splendor of his future gay plumage. 
The Redstart is often victimized by the Cowbird, and one feels 
the imposition more keenly in its case than in that of almost any 
other bird, for we know that the big clumsy Cowbird is being reared 
at the expense of a whole family of these pretty warblers. 
The Redstart comes early in May and stays through the summer. 
Some are seen even as late as October, but these are, very likely, 
birds which have bred far North, where the late summer did not 
permit them to rear their young so early as our own birds. 
